new doc on making of third man

[smartone]

debuting at cannes this week
SHADOWING THE THIRD MAN


¿Shadowing The Third Man¿ explores the making of Graham Greene¿s all time classic noir film ¿The Third Man¿. This is the first documentary ever to be made on this much-loved film, which was voted the best British film of the 20th century in a BFI poll.

For the next 90 minutes the Anglo-Austrian director Frederick Baker takes the audience on a journey, following Greene¿s story, while dividing fact from fiction about its making.
¿Shadowing the Third Man¿ literally projects the classic 1948 feature film back to the original locations in the Austrian capital Vienna. Using state-of-the¿art projection technology, the stunning images created by Carol Reed and the Oscar-winning DOP, Robert Krasker are beamed on a huge scale onto the glorious architecture of restored Vienna. So the city reclaims its place as one of the film's central characters.
The viewers see how Carol Reed used the ruins of a bombed out city, just 3 years after WWII to set a superb stage for such stars as Orson Welles (The unforgettable Harry Lime), Joseph Cotton, (the naive American novelist, Holly Martins), Trevor Howard (The suave controlled English officer Major Calloway) and Alida Valli (The coldly beautiful refugee Anna).
Two of the last remaining members of the crew return to tour the locations and bring the filming to life. The Assistant Director Guy Hamilton, who went on to direct three Bond movies is joined by the continuity assistant Angela Allen, to tell what it was like to film in the Vienna sewers, and how a drunk Trevor Howard was arrested for impersonating a British officer, while still in his costume as the sober Major Calloway.
The films producer's Frederick Baker and Avril MacRory have worked closely with the co-producers Ron Halpern (Studiocanal), Franz Grabner (ORF)and Anthony Wall (BBC) to develop the film and access the exclusive set stills, Austrian newsreels and BBC recordings, together with Nobuo Isobe (NHK), Charles Tabesh (TCM) and Peter Zawrel (WFF-Vienna).

[NoFake]

And from fact to fiction: according to Variety --

Danny Huston will play Orson Welles in Oliver Parker's
political thriller "Fade to Black," which is set to start
shooting in July.

Pic, adapted by Parker and John Sayles from a novel
by Davide Ferrario, takes place in Rome during 1948,
when Welles was starring in "Black Magic."

In the fictionalized story, Welles gets entangled with
Italian starlet Lea Padovani, and stumbles into an
American plot to subvert the Italian elections so that
the Communists don't win power in the chaotic after-
math of WW2.

Spanish actress Paz Vega ("Spanglish") will play Pado-
vani, with Kevin Bacon also in talks to star.

Ralph Kamp and Louise Goodsill's Odyssey is handling
worldwide sales for the $15 million movie, which is being
produced by Barnaby Thompson's Ealing Studios...

[babus]

That documentary played on TCM during the night (i think it's the same one). I taped it but have not watched it yet. It's great that's it's showing at the Cannes Festival.

[Glenn Anders]

Interesting, but I have read some mixed reviews of the documentary.

NoFake's shoehorning of a reference to a film about Welles is also interesting. The subject of the proposed film takes us back to the original script of CITIZEN KANE, and the attachment of John Sayles and Danny Huston to the project is intriguingly proper.

Sayles, in his quiet way, is as close to Welles as we have today. He has written screenplays, directed and acted in pictures of his own devising, often films with political themes. And as Welles financed his later movies through performing acting chores, Sayles has financed his by re-writing the film scripts of others (perhaps this one, too).

Huston will bring personal impressions of Welles to his performance through the friendship of his father with Welles.

FADE TO BLACK does seem a long way from a shooting date at this point, however. I can't find anything else about.

Thank you, NoFake, for bringing us the news.

Glenn

[NoFake]

My pleasure, Glenn! And thank you for the backstory on Sayles. Really whets my appetite for the film...

[PT Caffey]

That "Fade to Black" news is interesting, athough "Fade to Black" is an awful title. I think it's been the title of at least one forgotten slasher film.

"Shadowing the Third Man" was a disappointment. First of all, the gimmick of projecting scenes from the movie on buildings, blinds, stray bulldogs, you name it--was distracting. Secondly, those jabbing at Welles seem to forget that his contribution made the film into the classic it is. The extent to which David Selznick and Carol Reed were hopped up on speed was interesting.

[babus]

I saw Shadowing the third man yesterday and i agree, the projection of scenes on the pavement or on buildings was distracting and annoying to me. They were trying to be artsy and different but really failed. And they barely mentioned welles and definitly undermined his contribution to the film. I don't mind criticism on Welles but it really seemed that whatever came out of anyone's mouth on that documentary was not too flattering towards him most of the time. Mostly that one guy, i forgot who he was, but he was only there to say something like "he was the director, producer, writer, actor of citizen kane and whenever you talked to him you were talking to citizen kane". Do i smell jealousy? Anyway, TCM should have followed the documentary with actually playing the Third Man, like they did last year, so that people can make their own judgement on Welles as far as his contribution to the film.

[L French]

While "Shadowing the Third Man" has it's moments, it is really not that good... it's not even on the level of the documentaries that are now routinely added onto DVD's...

Perhaps the reason for this can be attributed to the lack of important witnesses who could be interviewed, since most of the major player's from the "The Third Man" are now long gone. Here the only major player who is interviewed is assistant director Guy Hamilton, who went on to direct "Goldfinger" and several other Bond movies.

And while there are some clips of Welles talking about the film from the Arena/BBC documentary (which of course is already familiar to most Welles afficiandos), and a few audio segments from Carol Reed himself, it's most strange that there is no stills or footage of Carol Reed himself directing on the set...

I think, that what would have been far more interesting would have been to have a good British actor reading Carol Reed's written comments about making the film, such as these comments:

Carol Reed: Orson was wonderful - Marvelous! He was difficult only about the starting date. I said, "look, we're going on location for five weeks. So any week, give us two days notice and we'll be ready for you. And give me one week out of seven in the studio."

He kept to that. He came straight off the train in Vienna one morning, and we did his first shot by Nine 'O clock. He said, "Jesus, this is the way to make pictures!" He walked aross the Prater, said two lines to Joe Cotten, and then I said, "Go back to the hotel and have breakfast. We're going into the sewers and we'll send for you when we need you."

Also, one of the most revealing aspects in the documentary, for me, were these lines that Graham Greene wrote but ultimately decided against including in the final script:

After Martins shoots his friend Harry Lime - whose nod gives him the approval he needs to go ahead and shoot him, this dialogue took place:

Calloway and his men reach reach the end of the passage behind the searchlight. They hear a shot and halt, turning on the light. Martins comes out into the beams with hanging head.

CALLOWAY:
What happened?

MARTINS:
I couldn't bear his pain. I put a bullet through him.

CALLOWAY:
We'll forget that bit.

MARTINS:
I never shall.


Dissolve to:

THE CENTRAL CEMETERY

The coffin of Harry Lime is being lowered into the grave, just as in the first sequence...

[dmolson]

Did the documentary make any mention of Allida Valli, the beautiful Italian actress who leapt to international stardom based on her portrayal of the loyal Anna? As in why she wasn't taking part in this project -- since from my info she remains much alive and even active, having made a film two years ago at the age of 81.
It really bugs me when these documentaries on films do not include some actors/production people who remain lucid and interesting -- al beit it may be mostly because they do not wish to contribute or relive the experience. Richard Widmark is renown for rebuffing parties who want him to comment on his hollywood career, while Doris Day didn't want anything to do with any 'making of' backstories on her recently released dvd films. But many instances are as a result of just not asking -- apparently Kirk Douglas was willing to contribute to the soon-to-come Lust for Life dvd but was spurned.

[Glenn Anders]

Alida Valli (real name Alida von Altenburger), born in Pola, Istria, which is now part of Croatia, may not look back at her career with a great deal of pleasure. She had been in Italian movies since 1936, refused to make further Fascist movies, and hid out during World War II. [Her mother was shot as an "Anti-Fascist" in 1945.] After the War, she became entangled in the controlling contractual web of David O. Selznick, which is why she was in THE THIRD MAN. He was going to make her an International Star, but he put her in so many so-so American and multi-national productions that she returned to Italy, in the early 1950's, and became a character actress.

But she certainly lived up to Selznick's hype in THE THIRD MAN.

Glenn

[colwood]

According to an article at cnn.com, the version played on TCM is a shortened version of the original. The original is scheduled to be released on dvd with the Third Man in France next month.

http://www.cnn.com/2005....ex.html

[Harvey Chartrand]

When the Italian composer and jazz musician Piero Piccioni was accused of murdering starlet Wilma Montesi, his close friend Alida Valli gave him an alibi for the day the 20-year-old girl was presumed to have died in April 1954, saying he had been with her at the home of the film producer Carlo Ponti. Montesi's body was found lying dead on a beach near Rome.
Piccioni was the son of Italian foreign minister Attilio Piccioni, a leading Christian Democrat politician. Gossip about Piero Piccioni's involvement in the girl's mysterious death surfaced in a tabloid, and, before long, shady figures of the emerging Roman dolce vita were also implicated in Montesi's apparent drowning.
Piccioni and his friends were accused of having drugged the girl at an orgy in a beach villa. They were acquitted of murder in 1957 and the Montesi case is still unsolved.
Alida Valli, her name dragged through the mud in this protracted sex-drugs-murder scandal, stuck to her alibi story and had to rebuild her acting career from scratch. There is a three-year gap in her filmography after Visconti's classic historical romance SENSO (1954), in which she is at the peak of her beauty. By the time Valli returned to the screen in Pontecorvo's THE WIDE BLUE ROAD in 1957, she was a bit older and matronly in appearance. From then on, it was character parts for Valli. She worked steadily until quite recently, in classics such as Antonioni's IL GRIDO, Franju's LES YEUX SANS VISAGE, Pasolini's EDIPO RE and Argento's SUSPIRIA. She is now 84 and presumably retired.

[Glenn Anders]

Shades of MR. ARKADIN!

I had known there was a scandal involving Valli. I thought it involved drugs, but I had forgotten or never known the details.

The murder of Montesi reminds me of Milly's end in MR. ARKADIN.

And the general situation is rather like the "real one" in THE THIRD MAN.

Thank you, Harvey.

Glenn